Mi casa su casa

Month: March 2016

From “Poison” onward, the songwriting process finally started getting the rhythm we’ve always wanted it to have in the first place. I set my mind to it, I really wanted to accomplish THE goal. So when I played my guitar, it was never in an innocent, “I’m just gonna sit here and play” mood. I knew I had to write music. When I couldn’t do it, I’d spend interminable hours of my day just thinking about what I’d do. I’d often be sad and desperate, wondering if I’d ever be able to produce again….and there was even one time when I lost my sleep over one of the songs (which by the way is now one of my favorites, hahaha). But that’s a story for another time – for now, let’s stick with “Poison”.

Poison lyrics with Alice’s notes

“Poison” just really came to me. The first riff, the verses, even most of the structure. By the way, regarding the structure, I tried not to be so obvious…and you might have noticed already that this is one of my personal challenges for the debut album, since I do believe in “In My Guts” we kinda stuck with the same formula in all of the songs. After having the structure kind of ready, Alice wrote the vocal melody, and then we started meeting weekly at her place to really just mend everything together. And that’s how we’ve been working so far, and it’s been working indeed. After that we bring the song to the rehearsal room and start playing it with Ale, and then it’s just practice, practice, practice. “Poison” was the first non-released song we started playing at our gigs, and maybe it will be the only one. We don’t wanna ruin the surprise. 😉

I consider “Poison” our “punk-est” song to date. Which was intentional, since the idea was to make a fast song, one that would work really well live. Check the video below and tell me what you think 😉

March the 11th, 2015: this is the date “Take it or Leave it” started being written. However, it was only on August the 20th that I consider it was somehow close to be finished, because it was only then Alice wrote the vocal lines, not to mention this song took us like…a lot of versions, too. Once again misusing the best riff in the song, too repetitive, obvious structure, yadda yadda yadda… (you can listen to the first version below and check it for yourself).

A post shared by Indiscipline (@indisciplineofficial) on Apr 23, 2015 at 5:56pm PDT

Alice recording a riff we ended up not using in “Take it or Leave it”

But why the delay to finish it, you ask me?

Gigs.

Gigs.

Gigs.

Gigs.

Of course, being 100% fair, I would say it was our own fault for not planning what we needed to plan the way we need to plan it. We could be touring and writing new songs, one thing doesn’t cancel the other. But this is about being a novice band: we sometimes just don’t have the maturity to know such stuff, and sometimes we do need to go through trouble (many times, trouble that was anticipated by people more experienced than us) to learn.

Good thing is, I think we have learned. One of my major personal disappointments for 2015 is that we didn’t release the full-lenght that year. Damn, it wasn’t even nearly finished by the end of 2015! We are nothing without an album. Best case scenario, worst case scenario, we’ll always need an album. That’s why this is our priority number 1. As I’m writing this post, we have 9 songs written (some are “readier” than others) and I’m running against time – I have until March the 6th to write 3 more songs. This is my personal deadline. I wonder if I’ll make it. Hahah. If I can’t do it, then we’ll release the 9 songs that are ready and that’s it.

Back to the song, when Alice wrote the vocal lines and we started rehearsing it, we noticed something was missing…”Take it or Leave it” lacked a “special” part, maybe with a solo. So I kept thinking and then I came up with this idea, to add this really simple, chromatic progression. I recorded it in video and presented the idea to the girls, and we made it work. I wrote the solo, rewrote it…and it was ready, finally! We rehearsed it a lot since this was probably our fastest song to date, and we were recording it for Converse’s Converse Rubber Track.

First time we played it live (solo slightly different than recorded version):

Higher was…something. It took us like…7 versions to get to that point where we thought the song was finally ready to be recorded. Some versions were never played by the band (like the one I posted on Soundcloud, and that the can be heard below)! And I don’t have any demos for the final version, hahah. I have to say, I disliked it for a long, long time. I thought it went from nowhere to anywhere, you know? It felt meaningless, but that changed. As of now (January/2016) we open our set list with this song, and it feels right. I’m damn glad for that.

This video is from January the 20th, 2015. Please, don’t mind my bored face…hahaha.

I had first thought of playing the chorus faster (as you can listen in the video above), but then when I recorded the demo version, Felipe [Eregion, from Unearthly, who happened to produce our first release ever, “In My Guts”, and who is also my dear beloved husband hahah] suggested I did the chorus differently, rather going for a more Sabbath-ish feeling in it. I feel a mother to my music, so it’s really difficult sometimes listening to people saying that they should be different, but I try my best to listen always (given it’s someone whose opinion I trust in the first place, of course). After all, it’s a different way of thinking than mine – and I do believe the music will profit from that.

Even with so many home-recorded demos, this is how “Higher” sounded, we played it a few times live, but…

…it just didn’t sound…complete. We all had our doubts regarding it. We were misusing the best riff in the song. Some parts were unnecessary and bland. So we stopped playing it for a while, until we decided what was best and made all the changed we need to make. And I gotta give it to Alice, she deconstructed the whole melody (which is pretty fucking hard, since that thing sticks to your head like superglue) and did something completely different, going from Dio to Alice in Chains in one song only. Can you hear the influences? 😉

This is 99% of how it sounds now – video recorded in September the 30th, 2015. The 1% is because of the solo, that I rewrote after a terrible argument with Felipe, who said it was poor and that the song deserved better. Well…he was right. The rewritten version IS better. hahah. But boy did it hurt to hear that about my baby </3

And this is how it sounds now. The real deal. ❤ We might change a few things here and there for the full-lenght album though.

Higher lyric sheet – Maria’s handwriting

Notice the date? I started writing it on January the 20th, 2015? Things were going fast, right? We even played “Higher” in Ale’s debut gig in the band, in March 2015! Maybe the full-length would be done on 2015? That was our hope, but things got slow. Reeeeally slow. Why? Coming up on the next post…

So, yeah, this was the first song we wrote for our upcoming, as yet untitled, debut full-length album. Thanks to the voice memos on my mobile phone, I can say that it started being written in September the 7th, 2014. Something like 1 month after we released “In My Guts”. You know, this is the most interesting thing about keeping the drafts, even if they carry a lot of mixed emotions with them – being able to listen to them afterwards and realize how much has changed! 🙂

A post shared by Indiscipline (@indisciplineofficial) on Jan 11, 2015 at 1:00pm PST

(Alice recording the vocals for the demo version of “Losing my Mind”)

It took us a long time to finally start rehearsing it. If it started being written in September 2014, we only actually began playing it on rehearsals in January 2015, and in that meantime, many things happened…like our (then) drummer leaving the band, and we having to rehearse with a friend, who was kind of doing us a favor while we didn’t find a permanent drummer. When our former drummer left, we were playing “Losing my Mind” like this:

Slow, huh?

This drummer friend had the coolest idea of playing the song faster, and it sounded so much better from the first time we played it! It just sounded complete, and we felt so good that we had at least one song for the so anticipated debut album. It’s amazing how sometimes (I think most times, actually) a small difference makes all the difference.